Much of what we have been studying in these past few weeks has been that we may arrive at the message which I will preach today. Many of you have received a letter in the mail describing my desire that one day we can say that every member of Cornerstone Community Church has agreed to and signed the church covenant, as I have included a copy in your letter. There are still some to mail, so if you are a member and haven’t received one or a regular attender and interested in membership, then let me know and I can meet with you. Simply write “letter” on the pad on which you sign up for sermon manuscripts.
As I wrote in the letter, this idea is not new to the Church. In fact, every church that I have been a member of in my life (as we have moved often) has had a church covenant. And the reason that churches have had them is that it was decided in the 1600’s that what made a group of people into a church was the fact that they were of the covenant people of God and that they had pledged to one another that they would believe in Christ and worship and minister in common. And that pledge took form in a church covenant.
And so, it should have been understood by me in every church that I joined that I was agreeing to uphold what the church covenant said, but it was never really brought to light. For some reason, church covenants have simply faded into the background and what has happened as a consequence of that is that membership has become arbitrary. Membership has become more of a loose affiliation instead of an understanding that it is a responsibility involving us in one another’s lives in order that we may grow in conformity to Christ.
And in fact, I am not sure how many would remember, but it was in preaching a sermon titled “A Return to Biblical Church Membership” from 1 Corinthians 12 back in January that I first proposed that we needed to see membership as joining a community held together by a covenant to be the body of Christ to one another. And my study in the months following that sermon and conversation with many of you has only confirmed that this is the way we should proceed.
Therefore, (probably) on Sunday October 29, those who are members or watchcare members of Cornerstone will proclaim their desire to join here afresh in a signing of our church covenant. And I think it will be a glorious day in the life of the church. In fact, as Mike Oliver suggested, I hope it will be the first of an annual remembering of what we have been called to as we look back upon our covenanting together year after year, remembering and celebrating the work God has done among us.
And because of this, I want to address the question this morning in even more depth, “Why should we have a church covenant?” And I want us to find our answer in the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
This chapter begins Paul’s exhortation to the believers in this province after convincing them of how amazing it is that God made them alive while they were dead in their sins and saved them by his grace. And as we read this same exhortation, I pray that we have been prepared as well in these past weeks at understanding how blessed we are and how amazing it is that we are able to be the called, covenant people of God.
So let me highlight four exhortations he gives that I think will shed light on why we should have a church covenant. So, as you hear these you can understand them in light of the preface, “We should have a church covenant …”
Paul writes, after describing the beauty of their calling, in verse 1, “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, entreat you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.” And I make the same exhortation this morning. Because of what we have learned in the past few weeks about what it means to be God’s covenant people, let’s walk worthy of our calling.
A church covenant serves this exhortation in two ways. 1) It is a way of fulfilling it. By covenanting together with one another, it is a step that says, “I want to walk worthy” and 2) it provides accountability in our walk. And this is something we all need. The Christian life was never designed to be lived alone. We need one another.
In fact, part of our church covenant reads, “We will submit ourselves to the discipline of this Church as a testimony of our desire to always walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. And for our brothers and sisters, we will seek their spiritual advancement as dearly as our own.” We make statements like that as Christians because we want to glorify our God so much that we strive with our everything to live holy and help our brothers and sisters reach that goal as well.
I commit to help you walk worthy as we join together in this, and I need you to help me as well. It is a comfort to me that if you sign this covenant and I am walking in sin that you will confront me. It is a comfort because I want to die with men saying, “He knew God and He loved God,” and I cannot do that on my own.
But how do we walk worthy of our calling? I mean, if we have listened in the last several weeks, the last thing we can say is that God called us to himself because we deserved it. So, what does it mean to walk worthy when grace itself implies our unworthiness?
I’ve wrestled with this all week, but I think there is an answer to be found in 1 Corinthians 15:9-10. Paul writes, “For I am the least of the apostles, because I persecuted the church of God. [Paul is definitely spelling out his unworthiness to be an apostle, yet adds …] But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”
It seems like a paradox at first doesn’t it? Paul says, “I am the least … but by the grace of God I am what I am” and then adds, “And His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them.” I think that is Paul saying, “But I walked worthy of my calling so that God’s grace, which is my calling, would not be in vain.” He is saying, I did everything I could to walk worthy of my calling. And just at the point that the reader might be thinking, “So Paul thinks he was worthy of the calling” Paul adds, “Yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”
In other words, we walk worthy by grace. Grace calls us and we walk worthy of our calling by grace as well. The Christians life is repenting and believing, recognizing it was only by grace, and it is living worthy of being the called of God with much labor, recognizing it is only by grace.
And Paul adds in verse 2 of our text this morning that we labor by walking in humility, gentleness, patience, and forebearance toward one another in love. That’s a great portion of our labor. So, brothers and sisters, labor. Labor with all your might, constantly relying on the grace of God. And one way we do this is by covenanting together to walk in such a way.
Paul writes in verse 3, “Being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Just last week, Romy, Adam’s friend from Egypt was here, and we were able to spend most of an afternoon praying together. Before we prayed, Romy shared with me some things for which he wanted me to pray, and he asked me to share some requests as well. So, I shared a few things with him, one of them being that I would be diligent about the task to which God has called me in the pastorate. And as I said it, Romy just sat there. I looked at him and thought, “I hope that’s okay to pray.” I didn’t know what he was thinking. Finally, he said, “Lee, I have no idea what the word 'diligent' means."
I spent the next several minutes trying to explain to him what diligence is. And I was struggling. There are some words that just mean what the word is. But I know you cannot define a word using that word, so I kept thinking. Finally, I said something that conveyed it to Romy. I told him that to be diligent in the task to which God had called me meant that I would be actively pursuing it with my everything. And he understood it.
I bring that up because when we think about unity in the church, we are so often passive about it. It’s as if we all sit around and just think to ourselves, “I wish there was more unity among us.” However, Paul says, be “diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Unity among ourselves is something that we are to be actively pursuing. We need to be constantly striving toward unity.
And much like a person who longs to be one with someone in marriage makes a covenant with that person, I believe making a covenant to uphold unity will aid in that by making the proclamation and stating how we will do it.
Some declarations in our church covenant regarding this are: “We will work and pray for unity among the members of this body, choosing to love one another even as we love ourselves. We will walk together in brotherly love, exercise affectionate care for one another, and faithfully encourage and exhort one another as occasion may require. We will seek to fellowship with our brothers and sisters, and we will not neglect to pray for ourselves and one another.” And, “We will rejoice at one another’s happiness and, by tenderness and sympathy, bear one another’s burdens and sorrows.”
And why behave toward one another in such a way? Paul answers in verses 4-6. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” We strive in our entire being because we are the body of Christ. And, as Paul asks the Corinthians, “Is Christ divided?” No.
This is the mission which God has given us. Therefore, what we do needs to fit within this and work toward this.
Now let me show you that Paul has this same goal in mind with the believers in Ephesus and let me show you how he thought this was to be accomplished.
Let’s start at the end and go backward. Paul writes in verse 13 that we are to do something, “Until we all [every man] attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature [i.e. complete (teleion, same word used in Colossians 1:28)] man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” So, that’s the goal of our labor. We strive until all men among us attain to completion in Christ before the Father. I love it when Scripture continues to affirm the vision you believe God has given to the Church.
But how do we do it? Look back at verses 7-8 and 11-12. “But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, ‘When he ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men’ … And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.”
Paul says, we reach this goal in ministering to one another in the gifts Christ has given us to equip one another and build up the body of Christ. And I believe he is talking about spiritual gifts because he says that he gave the gifts when he ascended, and Jesus told the disciples in John 16:7, “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you, but if I go, I will send Him to you.”
(NOTE: I think what Paul is doing in verses 9-10 is just like what I did two weeks ago when I was preaching about God being with us and said, “That’s why Jesus is called Emmanuel,” adding “Now, why call him this unless Jesus is God?” See, the last statement did not have much to do with the argument, but it was too good to pass up. In the same way, Paul mentioning the ascension adds that Christ only ascended because he had first descended from heaven and shows the divinity of Christ. It was too good for him to pass up, as well.)
Therefore, by covenanting together to use the gifts God has given us to minister to and build up every man whom God brings us until he is complete in Christ only fulfills the mission we have been given. As we join and covenant together, we are responsible for our fellow members reaching their full potential in Jesus Christ.
Thus, part of our church covenant reads, “We will serve one another, using the gifts God has granted us in His sovereignty and grace. And in doing so, we will strive always to rely on the power of His Holy Spirit that all glory may be given to Him.”
Paul says that “As a result [of all this] we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted together and held together by that which every joint supplies according the proper working of each, individual part causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”
Now, let me address this one step at a time. First of all we need security, or as I have stated, we need to be stable. A family that is not stable and secure will never minister together. Why? They will not because they are always worried about working security within themselves that they leave themselves unable to do anything as a stable, secure group.
That might have been the case here at Cornerstone for a while as well. But I pray that as we covenant together in these things that it will build much stability among us in order that we may minister together and God may bring others to us who need a stable environment.
It will help us be grounded. You all should know my thoughts already on church hopping. In my mind, it is as foolish as a mother in a family saying she wants to go elsewhere. She misses the reality that her role comes from being in the family. And as we are grounded, it gives us an opportunity for the third thing I mentioned, namely, to grow.
Paul says that as each individual part is working together properly, it will cause the growth of the body. Therefore, as we covenant together to be the body of Christ to one another and work together properly, it will cause us to grow in knowledge, affection, and obedience to Christ in a way that we could not do if we were not joined together. And isn’t that the cry of our heart?
May his grace be with us. Amen.